Wife Of Nigerian Killed In Italy Demands Justice

 The wife of a Nigerian street trader who was killed in Italy has told the BBC she is seeking justice following his “painful death”.

Aliku Ogorchukwu, 39, was reportedly selling handkerchiefs in the seaside town of Civitanova Marche on Friday when he was chased and beaten to death.

A 32-year-old Italian has been arrested on suspicion of murder and robbery.

A video circulating online shows a man on top of Ogorchukwu, punching him with his bare hands.

None of those who witnessed the broad daylight attack appeared to intervene.

“This is a form of wickedness I don’t know,” Ogorchukwu’s wife, Charity Oriachi, told the BBC’s Focus on Africa.

Ms Oriachi said she had received help in coming to terms with her husband’s death but was tired of “talk”. Now, she was only interested in justice, she insisted.

Her family had lived in Italy for a long time, she said, stressing that her husband had never sought any trouble.

The killing has sparked outrage in the local community, including Nigerians, who took to the streets over the weekend and are planning another demonstration soon.

The Nigerian government has asked Italian authorities to quickly “bring the perpetrator of the heinous act” to justice.
Suspect not released

The suspect – a white man named as Filippo Claudio Giuseppe Ferlazzo – has been ordered to remain in jail as the investigation continues.

His defence lawyer told the media the suspect had said he was sorry and that there was “no racial element” involved.

A police investigator said Ogorchukwu was attacked after the trader’s “insistent” requests to the suspect and his partner for spare change.

The partner, identified as Elena D, told Italian newspaper Corriere della Sera that Ogorchukwu had touched her arm, but that did not bother her.

Ms Oriachi now wants to see the suspect “face to face”, to understand why he killed her husband, the family’s lawyer told the Associated Press.

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US Kills al Qaeda Leader Ayman al-Zawahiri In Drone Strike In Afghanistan

 The United States killed al Qaeda leader Ayman al-Zawahiri in a drone strike, President Joe Biden said Monday in a speech from the White House.

“I authorized a precision strike that would remove him from the battlefield, once and for all,” Biden said.

Zawahiri, who just turned 71 years old, had remained a visible international symbol of the group, 11 years after the US killed Osama bin Laden. At one point, he acted as bin Laden’s personal physician.

Zawahiri was sheltering in downtown Kabul to reunite with his family, Biden said, and was killed in what a senior administration official described as “a precise tailored airstrike” using two Hellfire missiles. The drone strike was conducted at 9:48 p.m. ET on Saturday was authorized by Biden following weeks of meetings with his Cabinet and key advisers, the official said on Monday, adding that no American personnel were on the ground in Kabul at the time of the strike.

Senior Haqqani Taliban figures were aware of Zawahiri’s presence in the area, the official said, in “clear violation of the Doha agreement,” and even took steps to conceal his presence after Saturday’s successful strike, restricting access to the safe house and rapidly relocating members of his family, including his daughter and her children, who were intentionally not targeted during the strike and remained unharmed. The US did not alert Taliban officials ahead of Saturday’s strike.

In a series of tweets, Taliban spokesman Zabiullah Mujahid said, “An air strike was carried out on a residential house in Sherpur area of Kabul city on July 31.”

He said, “The nature of the incident was not apparent at first” but the security and intelligence services of the Islamic Emirate investigated the incident and “initial findings determined that the strike was carried out by an American drone.”

The tweets by Mujahid came out prior to CNN reporting Zawahiri’s death. Mujahid said the Islamic Emirate of Afghanistan “strongly condemns this attack on any pretext and calls it a clear violation of international principles and the Doha Agreement.”

Read Full Story …. HERE >>> :   

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Nigeria Adds 10 Million New Voters Ahead Of Polls

 Nigeria’s electoral commission says it has added more than 10 million new voters to its register.

In the latest numbers released on Monday, most of the newly registered voters were young people.

The year-long voter registration exercise ended on Sunday.

Next February, Nigerians will elect a new president to succeed Muhammadu Buhari – who has served the two terms allowed by the constitution.

Voters will also elect state governors and legislators

In the last election in 2019, there were 84 million registered voters, according to the electoral commission.

Analysts say the youth vote could be a deciding factor in the coming general election.

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Kidnappers Of Nollywood Actors Demand $100,000 Ransom

 Kidnappers of prominent Nollywood actors and members of the Actors Guild of Nigeria (AGN), Cynthia Okereke and Clemson Cornel, have made contact with the families of the stars demanding a total of $100,000 to release them.

This contact according to the Guild was via their families. The actors were reported missing after their family members confirmed they didn’t return home from a film location at Ozalla Town, Enugu state in Nigeria.

Both actors are renowned for starring in movies shot in Enugu and Delta States.

On Saturday, the AGN national president, Emeka Rollas, told a source that “the kidnappers have made contact with the families and are demanding the sum of $100,000. We pray to God for his intervention and for Him to put confusion in their midst.”

He continued; “We are also working closely with the different security operatives, but we are not sure what to expect from them because the same thing is happening everywhere in the country.”

Mr Rollas also said members of the Guild are working closely with the families of the victims and the security forces to ensure their safe release.

Mr Rollas added, ‘‘the kidnappers cleared the monies in Cynthia Okereke’s account this morning’’.

As part of measures to forestall a repeat occurrence, Mr Rollas said that the Guild had ordered its members not to shoot outside of the metropolis and to ensure that they make adequate provisions for security in their locations.

AGN’s Director of Communications, Monalisa Chinda, broke the news of the kidnap of the actors in a press statement.

Ms Chinda said their kidnap had increased fear amongst members about the safety of actors filming in the country.

Source: thechronicle.com.gh

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EU Says Novavax COVID Vaccine Should Carry Heart Side-Effect Warning

The European Medicines Agency (EMA) is recommending Novavax’s COVID-19 vaccine carry a warning of two inflammatory conditions of the heart, based on a small number of reported cases.

The conditions – myocarditis and pericarditis – should be listed as new side effects in the product information for the vaccine, Nuvaxovid, the EMA said on Wednesday.

The agency has also requested that the U.S. drugmaker provide additional data on the risk of these side effects occurring.

Last month, the EMA identified severe allergic reactions as potential side effects of the vaccine. read more

Novavax was hoping that people who have opted not to take Pfizer and Moderna’s vaccines – which are based on the groundbreaking messenger RNA (mRNA) technology – would favour its shot because it relies on technology that has been used for decades to combat diseases including hepatitis B and influenza.

However, only around 250,000 doses of Nuvaxovid have been administered in Europe so far since its launch in December, according to the European Centre for Disease Prevention and Control.

Source: Reuters

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Lack of funds hurting DR Congo conflict victims – UN

The UN’s refugee agency (UNHCR) says 4.5 million​ people for have fled their homes in the Democratic republic of Congo will be forced to sleep in churches, schools or out in the open because of insufficient funding.

For the past two decades, DR Congo has been home to high levels of violence by armed groups, which has left more than 5.6 million internally displaced people – the second highest after Syria. However, less than 20% of funding budgeted to help those in crisis in the country has been secured.

Since April, more than 160,000 people have been displaced following clashes between DR Congo’s army and armed groups.

The UNHCR says it does not have enough money to respond to what they describe as a rising humanitarian crisis in the country.

Adding that while attention is focused on crises in Syria, Afghanistan, and Ukraine – other emergencies, many of them in Africa, are not gaining the same levels of attention, support, and resources.

The refugee agency warns that underfunded crises in the world are being made worse by a mix of conflict, climate shocks, the impact of the pandemic and the current war in Ukraine that has driven up the global price of food and fuel.

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Did Pelosi have Biden’s secret approval for Taiwan trip? – A speculative analysis

To the rest of the world, United States House Speaker Nancy Pelosi who is third in line for the presidential succession ignored President Biden’s plea to abort her planned Taiwan trip. But a careful analysis may suggest otherwise.

A careful 360 consideration of global events and a thorough understanding of the United States foreign policy posture in the current Biden administration suggest that the public disagreement between Biden and Pelosi is all a gimmick.

First, the similarities between Russia/Ukraine and China/Taiwan cannot be overlooked. Both Russia and China have expressly anti-democratic regimes. Conversely, positioned in close proximity to both countries are Ukraine and Taiwan both democratic countries which want nothing to do with the superpower next door.

Both Russia and China aspire to claim the democratic smaller countries next to them as within their territorial influence even if those countries insist on their independence and aspire closer relations to the united States to the chagrin of the superpower next door.

Russia made the move to invade Ukraine and has been locked in a protracted war without the United States lifting a visible finger to get directly involved.

The Biden administration would want to make certain that it would not walk away and abandon Taiwan, and what better way to make that statement than to have a surrogate make a high profile trip to Taiwan while pretending in public to be against the trip?

Asked what he thought of Nancy Pelosi’s trip to Taiwan, Biden said “the military thinks it’s not a good idea.” Note that he dodged that question.

After four years of Trump sending mixed signals to America’s allies around the globe about support for them, Biden came in determined to re-establish relations with those allies. And thus far everything he has done is designed to pursue that goal.

He even abandoned the long-held “strategic ambiguity” policy of the United States towards Taiwan and went as far as to state on his Asia trip that the United States would defend the island in the event of a China invasion.

How does Biden make such a bold statement and then shy away from threats from China? Pelosi and Biden are both Democrats, and the former would not do anything to hurt the latter’s foreign policy goals. As a result, does anyone believe that Biden could not have leaned on Pelosi to abort the trip if he seriously wanted her not to go?

Biden and Pelosi are counting on Xi Jingpin being smart enough to see the trouble that Putin has gotten himself into and would not want to get himself also embroiled in a never-ending war as he deals with an obstinate corona virus that is still sunning wild in China.

In the end, it is suspected that Biden called Xi Jingpin’s bluff, and secretly nudged Pelosi to proceed with the trip to Taiwan. Jingpin would end up not escalating the tension any higher than he has at this point because after all, what is a trip to Taiwan by the number three person in America?

Note: DNT has no background information for this analysis.

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